Sakura returned to her cramped hotel room about twelve times more exhausted than when she'd left.
All Tsunade's friends were awful. It was a fact. The woman herself wasn't too bad, but every time Sakura met one of her friends? Awful.
'Come out for a drink or two,' Tsunade'd said. 'Loosen up,' she said. 'Take your mind off things.'
Sakura's hotel room had all the charm of a freshly opened box of Kleenex. It was neat, it was white and that was about it. It served a specific function.
She crossed it in six tired steps and dropped her keycard onto a table crammed into the far corner, where it joined the bland hotel-branded stationary. The bed was right there, then, so she turned and flopped on her face.
It was clean but it smelled all wrong. Didn't smell like Sasuke, she thought dully.
She could still hear Mei crowing, divorced before you're even thirty, that makes me feel better, doesn't it? and her barbed little laugh.
Mei was awful. All Tsunade's friends were. Awful drunks, usually.
Sakura, importantly, was one of Tsunade's friends.
Being awful was probably why Mei was still unmarried, since she obviously cared so much about it. Being a bitch probably made it hard to get a boyfriend, too, right?
Sakura groaned.
That thought was petty and beneath her - not to mention stupid. Plenty of terrible people somehow ended up happily married to other, equally terrible people. And sometimes people who weren't terrible...
Or who didn't think they were terrible, at least...
Sakura made another exhausted and pathetic noise.
She could have gotten drunker, more safely and efficiently, with less commentary, in her own damn hotel room. She rolled over, squinting against the strips of streetlight let through by the blinds. In the nocturnal half light they cast long bars across her bed and her body.
Maybe there was something in the minibar.
No. She had to see the solicitor tomorrow, and then after that she was to meet Uchiha Mikoto for goodness only knew what. It wouldn't be a good idea to drink any more...
A shower, she decided, still unmoving. A really hot one, which would turn her skin red and make her tired enough to sleep.
The thought was there, but the motivation didn't follow. It took her twenty minutes to get back up.
The morning dawned, which was the first bad news of the day. After Sakura had come to terms with that terrible fact, the rest sort of fell in line, as much as these things could do.
She managed to put off having to actually see Sasuke - despite how her whole body missed him like a lost goddamn limb - for another week by emailing and calling him. Sasuke was expectedly terrible at communicating via writing or talking, or indeed in any situation where she couldn't see the specific set of his jaw and the angle of his eyebrows. Somehow this, too, seemed agonisingly familiar and weirdly endearing.
It was sort of disgusting, how much cooperating with him on the matter of their divorce reminded Sakura of why she liked him in the first place.
The solicitor was as bland and professional and patient about it as she could possibly have hoped for, even though Sakura was pretty sure he thought she was an idiot. It didn't matter - by the end of the process she'd be properly divorced and she and Sasuke would never have to speak again. And they probably wouldn't, either. They didn't travel in the same social circles, and he wasn't what anyone, however generous, might call chatty. Or friendly. Or cordial. Or... well. Civil was usually pushing it.
The meeting with Mikoto was even more greatly dreaded than the one with the solicitor. Mikoto wasn't a party to an awkward mutual silence, unlike Sasuke. None of those unspoken rules applied to her, and she didn't seem inclined to respect them either. It had been nothing more than a voice mail message, short and gentle and to the point, early last week: 'Hello, Sakura. I'd like to meet with you. Let me know when you're available in the coming week.'
And then Sakura had put it off for as long as she could, but - however gentle she seemed on the outside, Mikoto was not a woman accustomed to being told 'no'. Nobody would have dared.
So Sakura took public transport across town to the tea house where Mikoto wanted to meet, a tiny hole-in-the-wall wooden place with low tables and tatami mats. The whole place smelled of sweet soy and green tea, and at two in the afternoon it was quiet.
Sakura was three minutes late, so of course Mikoto was already there, calm and waiting for her. She was a classical beauty, round-faced and pale with the coarse, inky hair her son had inherited. She gave the impression of someone who had been waiting forever, and who would remain waiting, implacably, forever, until she got what she was waiting for.
"Please excuse me for being late," Sakura said politely.
"I hadn't noticed," Mikoto assured her, although Sakura was certain she had.
They talked politely, small talk, how have you been? and did your dinner party go well? and work is still busy? for long enough that Sakura began to wonder why they were even here. There had to be more to this than a polite catch-up, even if Mikoto was a perfectly pleasant person to have tea with.
She came out with it, finally, after almost a full half hour of pleasantries and small talk.
"I think," said Mikoto, lowering her cup. It met the wood of the table without a sound. "That we will see less of each other now."
Sakura hunched over her tea. It was true. She would... definitely see less of her (ex-) mother in law after divorcing the woman's son.
Sakura felt the overwhelming urge to apologise. It was stupid, of course. The time to apologise had long passed - that had been roughly when she'd said, "we should get a divorce," and ideally before Sasuke had responded, "I think that's a good idea."
She'd miss Mikoto, almost as much as she already missed Sasuke - and more honestly, too, because she missed Sasuke from a sense of familiarity and comfort, and she'd miss Mikoto because they got on and she liked her. That was something nobody had warned her about, regarding her divorce - that she wouldn't just lose her husband, but her family, too.
Sakura's parents were dead, and she was part of a long line of only children. She didn't have a lot of family to fall back on.
There wasn't exactly bad blood between Sakura and Sasuke - but no breakup could be wholly without bitterness, and having Sakura around would be... awkward for the whole family for a while.
"I... it wouldn't be good. Maybe we can... meet for tea, or..." Sakura hedged, feeling depressed at the thought.
"Of course," said Mikoto immediately. "Sakura, of course. You and I have always been good friends. But, I wanted to talk to you about something else. I know you left the house with Sasuke."
"It's Uchiha property," she pointed out, shifting in her seat. It was, and she hadn't even tried to have it put in her name because of it. Sakura had never quite belonged to that place even when she lived there, and it was in part because it was so very... Uchiha. It belonged to someone stern and serious who wanted to raise a big family of stern, serious, dark-eyed children who would grow up to be... rich and stern and serious and wildly emotional and relentlessly political, probably.
"It is," Mikoto said, "and you were very wise not to argue about it, but... forgive me, Sakura, but I know your parents were unable to leave you anything, and-"
A sinking sensation took hold of Sakura's guts. Was Mikoto here to offer her money? She shifted uncomfortably in her chair again. She couldn't...
"- I know you've been staying in hotels -"
She didn't want to interrupt Mikoto of course, but she could feel her face going hot with humiliation.
"I wanted to..." Mikoto pursed her lips. "I wanted to be sure, for my own peace of mind, that you had something to fall back on. Just - just in case, Sakura."
She dug in her bag and pulled out a paper folder, and Sakura couldn't hold back anymore. "Mikoto," she started. "I can't -"
"It's not money," said Mikoto sharply. Sakura bit her tongue. "It's a gift. It was - listen, it was passed to me just before I married Fugaku and it remains mine to do with as I wish. It's my property. I would like - I insist, in the strongest possible terms - that you accept it as a gift."
She passed the folder to Sakura with a steady hand, and caught hers when Sakura reached out to take it. Mikoto's hands were lightly lined, soft-skinned. Her nails were uniformly shaped and cared for. Sakura was very aware of her own rough skin and chewed fingernails.
Mikoto didn't seem to notice. She just wrapped Sakura's fingers in hers. "Do not give me the grief of sending a daughter of mine out into the world with nothing."
Sakura swallowed.
"I..." she took the folder and flipped it around.
"You can do as you like with it - sell it or knock it all over or - it doesn't matter. Just -"
It was a deed. A... a 'sale' Mikoto was making to Sakura for a token two hundred yen.
"I can't..." Sakura started, bewildered.
Mikoto was unyielding, though, and by the end of their meeting, Sakura found herself drawn in to a nearby office to complete the 'sale' directly. This, then, explained why the tea house had been on the wrong side of town - it was nearer Mikoto's lawyer. She had planned it all out very carefully.
"Thank you," said Mikoto, clutching Sakura's hand as though Sakura was the one who had done her a favour. "You probably think I'm being ridiculous, but I'll sleep better now."
The street wasn't very busy, and Mikoto's driver stuck out like a lily in a field of poppies.
"Go on," Sakura encouraged her gently, still feeling raw and bewildered by the whole exchange. "I'll call you."
Mikoto met her eyes. "Do."
She waited until the car had gone, its expensive engines purring softly on the empty street, before she leant back against the old brick wall and slumped.
What on earth was Sakura ever going to do with a sprawling property out in the middle of nowhere? Other, she thought sourly, than to pay tax on it.
She went home, for a value of home that indicated her hotel room, raided the minibar - they'd refilled it, thank god - and promptly forgot all about the property.
For now.
It was another three weeks of confused hotel living and certainly too much drinking before Sakura's life took a nose dive. She'd thought she'd pretty well hit rock bottom already - the life of a divorcee under thirty with no fixed address and no friends who shamelessly got drunk before twelve noon on her days off seemed already pretty dire.
But life was waiting in the wings to hand her a drill and prove there was always further down to go.
She sagged into her seat. It wasn't very comfortable.
"Oh my god," she said, covering her face with her hands.
Tsunade's office was dim as always, blinds drawn against he glow of the mid-morning sun, probably in deference to her own hangover.
"In part, it's just rotten luck," said the doctor herself, seeming much more prosaic about the matter than Sakura felt. Certainly she looked like she was experiencing the very long morning after a very big night. She dropped her dark glasses on the desk and set her coffee mug down.
"Who hasn't turned up to practice drunk before? It's absolutely imbecilic, but everyone's done it once."
Of course, Tsunade rarely had to actually be in surgery, so it probably mattered a lot less if she was...
"I wasn't drunk," said Sakura pathetically through her hands. The coffee smelt heavenly and she wanted six.
She hadn't been drunk. Wasn't drunk. But she'd been drunk last night, that was for sure, and she certainly wasn't at her best this morning.
"Hungover then. You're lucky that she had no family, so there's no one left to sue you. And that the surgery doesn't have a high success rate to start with. But you know -"
Sakura made a noise like a dying cat.
"Stop it. Look at me." There was a bang. Sakura jumped, only to realise that the sound had been Tsunade's hand slamming down onto the desk. A trickle of dark coffee dripped down one side of he mug.
Tsunade met her eyes unflinchingly for a second. "This isn't the first time you've had a patient die."
"Of course not." Sakura made a noise in the back of her throat. This was a hospital. It was where people came to die. She hadn't been d... hungover, those times, though. "That's different though."
"You're right. It is." Tsunade let that hang there for a second, until Sakura wanted to dive out the door, or perhaps under the desk. Her head hurt, and she wasn't convinced it was entirely her hangover. "We've got to cover ourselves, too. We can make sure we don't link her death with your drinking, but we do have to report it -"
Sakura clenched her jaw but didn't protest. The hospital would get mired in trouble so deep it'd never haul itself out if anybody found out they hadn't reported her to the Board.
"-And let you go."
"You can say 'fire you'," said Sakura, still vibrating with anxiety and feeling faintly shell-shocked. "I definitely deserve it."
It was bad news to be reported to the Board for showing up drunk - hungover - of course, but since it seemed like Tsunade wasn't going to tell them that it had also contributed to her messing up up a tricky procedure, Sakura felt she was getting off lightly.
Maybe too lightly, honestly. It was true that the surgery was tricky, and it was true that doctors and surgeons were no strangers to patient deaths, but... Now Sakura was always going to wonder if her patient had died or if she'd killed her.
"You deserve a lot worse than that," Tsunade said severely. For a second her feelings got the better of her: "Sakura, you know better!"
Sakura cringed. She did know better, was the worst of it.
A second later Tsunade seemed like she'd gotten control of her temper again - however temporarily.
Sakura might have preferred if she'd yelled some more. But it was just Tsunade, looking every minute of every day of her age, leaning tiredly on her desk. Her expression was exhausted, not enraged.
"Do you think I'm going to enjoy reporting my own student?" she muttered.
Sakura twitched.
"Cooperate with the Board's processes and use your suspension as an opportunity to get your damn life together, okay? Sort yourself out. You can't let this sort of thing turn into a habit."
A small, adamant part of Sakura wondered what on earth Tsunade thought she had to say about that, since her reputation as a brilliant doctor was only outstripped by her reputation as a sloppy drunk, but she clenched her jaw on it. That would have been crossing a line.
Tsunade looked up, glanced at her expression and then snorted, apparently reading her mind. "I know, more than anyone, that moving on from a spouse is hard, but... Sakura, something like this? This can't happen twice."
She nodded, feeling more sober than she had in a month, and watched without comment as Tsunade tugged at the chain of her necklace.
"When you've arranged your life around another person, it takes a while to remember, sometimes," she said slowly, "that you can be a whole person without them."
"...Tsunade," Sakura murmured, but her boss - teacher, mentor, friend, but today: definitely her boss - didn't seem to hear her, and after a moment she elected not to comment.
This absolute disaster of a morning left her in hot water with the Medical Board, of course, and her license to practice was summarily suspended, paperwork pending. This was... well, Sakura did not enjoy having the rules applied to her but she was adult enough to acknowledge that if anybody else had been in her position she'd have agreed that immediate suspension was the right call.
Unfortunately, being able to acknowledge that did not help Sakura deal with the ramifications of the suspension - she couldn't practice and had no income coming in. And divorces were expensive.
She wasn't immediately in dire straits, but with no money coming in she knew her savings wouldn't last more than a few months - which was probably as long as the Board would take to even process her suspension.
Living the hotel life was only going to make it worse, too.
Sakura spent two weeks dithering around, looking at research positions and places where she might get paid for guest lectures in her area of speciality, before she gave up on stop-gaps. If she'd wanted to be a researcher she'd have taken biomed and not a qualification in applied medical sciences.
So what, other than medicine, was Sakura willing and able to do? She'd need to find somewhere cheap to stay to manage it, too. She couldn't keep living out of hotels.
Mikoto's deed from all those weeks ago seemed suddenly to occupy a great many of her waking thoughts. There was nowhere cheaper than a place you already owned, especially if it was out in the middle of nowhere where the rates were peanuts, too...
It seemed a bit nuts at first. Move out to the middle of nowhere in the country? And do what? She wouldn't know anyone, she wouldn't have anything to do, she...
But maybe that was the point. A change of scene and society, right?
What was stopping her?
A few things, as it turned out, but nothing insurmountable. She let her solicitor know how to contact her, since they were still finalising the smoking wreck of her marriage. She emailed Sasuke to let him know she was leaving town, and even got a downright friendly 'I'll make a note of it' in response.
She let the hotel know when she'd be leaving and bought a ticket for a country bus departing at eight thirty in the morning from a stop at a city transport depot.
Sakura hadn't taken a lot to her hotels with her. Clothes that still fit her, makeup, identification, personal hygiene items. Her books and things were still in their - in Sasuke's house. She'd already read them, and she didn't have anywhere to take them anyway. She'd left half her jewellery, too, because heaven knew some of it was family stuff, and she'd felt weird and guilty taking much of the rest.
Not as weird and guilty as she felt about her patient dying and getting her license suspended, of course.
It all fit in two bags.
She felt a strange, private shame just walking around outside on her own now. She was half tempted to tell random strangers on the street about it - hello, stranger, I killed one of my patients. Maybe. Maybe not. Probably. She'd have had a much better chance if I hadn't been drunk at work at nine in the morning, and I have feelings about it that I suspect may not entirely be solved by the application of more alcohol.
Sasuke never drank.
She rubbed her forehead a lot, wore dark glasses to save her stinging eyes from the sun, and tried to muster a smile for the bus driver who helped her load her luggage.
"Thanks," she said, although she was pretty sure she was better fit to load her own heavy bags than this old guy was.
"No problem," he said cheerfully, smiling at her so guilelessly that her stomach churned. "We'll be leaving in ten."
"Great," she said, and boarded posthaste.
The bus went a long way before it arrived at the valley. Sakura had read 'nine hours' on the website when she'd booked her ticket, but she had not completely understood just how far away that really meant.
Two hours took her out of the city and past the samey sprawl of suburban houses and shiny family sedans, out past an assortment of small properties. Then there was a vineyard and a paddock full of leggy horses who ran from the rumble of the bus. And after that it was just empty. There were sprawling green fields in which was growing exactly nothing that Sakura could see any use for, then a steadily rising path into the mountains. The road wound in huge, snaking curves and the greenery on either side transformed into uncomfortable drops, fallen boughs and dark green foliage. There wasn't a lot else for miles.
She'd been checking the map application on her phone but as their road wound higher the connection dropped out. About eight hours in they stopped at a tiny mountain village and the last three other people got off the bus.
"Excuse me," she said to the driver as he got back on board, "I'm worried I've missed my stop or something..."
"No," he said with a smile that was missing teeth, "Dawn Valley is next up. We're only running a little late, we should be there by six."
They'd left at 8:30 AM. Sakura licked her lips. "Okay. Thank you."
The sun was beginning to go down by the time they made it, colouring everything golden red, and the road had turned to dirt long ago. They stopped with a sigh of mechanics next to a bus stop that was... in the middle of nowhere.
The road stretched on either side, apparently forever. There was no hint of a path.
Sakura had a screenshot of the map, but...
"Uh," she said, alighting with her bag over her shoulder, "could you direct me toward..."
"Look," said the bus driver, nodding at something over her shoulder. "That'd be the welcoming committee up ahead. You'll be fine."
Sakura blinked as the doors closed with a snap and the bus took off with a groan and a scrape of dirt under its big wheels.
The 'welcoming committee', as the driver had phrased it, was one man and he did not in fact look even slightly welcoming.
The man was huge, with broad shoulders and long legs and dark, scar-studded skin that made him look very fierce, and he glowered down at Sakura. His eyes just peeked over the edge of his huge dark scarf. It was not that cold.
He certainly couldn't have been expecting her, because she hadn't told anyone she was coming, so... he must have been out here for his own reasons. Whatever those were.
"Um, excuse me, hello," said Sakura uncertainly. "Are you from the village? Sorry to bother you, but could you give me directions there?"
If it was humanly possible, his expression became even unfriendlier. His eyes drifted to her bag.
"Planning on working here?" his voice was deep, gravelly, and unimpressed.
"Er," said Sakura, wondering just quietly if there was a response here that was about to put her in actual physical danger. But if he lived there he'd find out eventually, so there was no point lying about it. "I, er, inherited a property here, a farm on the west side of the village-"
"The Uchiha place?" he cut in.
Sakura blinked. "You know it?"
Wait, Mikoto's maiden name was Uchiha? That was... She wrinkled her nose. No accounting for taste. Or family politics, apparently. Should have guessed.
"It's not a big town." His scowl was suspicious now, and his gaze intent. "You're going to sell it?"
"I... no? I was going to live there...?" As far as Sakura knew, the property was sort of a mess. She'd gotten the impression that it would cost a fair bit to fix it up and make it worth selling, and... well, aside from not having any idea where to start, there was a part of Sakura that felt like it would be very poor form indeed to sell something given to her as a gift.
"Good," grunted the man. Then, "Fine. I'll show you where the gates are."
It was a lucky thing that he'd been there because it turned out that the path down to the village was more convoluted than she'd anticipated. Dawn Valley Village was, as its name implied, very much in a valley, and the surrounding hills and ridges were steep and hard to pass.
"I'm Haruno Sakura," Sakura said as they walked, feeling awkward. She was glad the big man had not offered to help with her bags - there was helpful, and hen there was so helpful as to cause suspicion and terror.
"Kakuzu," he grunted. First name? Surname? He did not clarify.
The fence, when they arrived there, was more a demarkation of the property boundaries than any kind of actual barrier. It consisted of a series of posts strung along with steel wire at regular intervals. They headed down a winding dirt path that was heavily overgrown at the edges but which bore traces of being used at some point. The light held steady enough that Sakura could see the ruts and holes in the packed dirt where a cart had once gone frequently.
The gate to which Kakuzu finally led her was chest high - on her, at least, although it was kind of rib-high on him - and he watched keenly while she dug out the big old key to its padlock.
It clicked open cleanly. The hinges screeched when she pushed the gate.
"This is where I leave you," he said. He had a short way of speaking, although Sakura guessed that could just be because she'd wasted his time this evening. He hadn't had to show her the way, though, if it really bothered him.
"Thanks," she said, with her own strained smile.
"Thank me by doing your shopping at the general store," he said.
She stared at him.
He stared back, eyes unblinking over his scarf and glinting strangely in the sunset.
"Okay," she said slowly. This seemed to be the only way he was going to leave.
He grunted and turned away and she wrestled the gate closed between them. There was probably no real need to close the gate, since there was nobody out here to whom it would be a reasonable barrier, and the only creature that might escape the property was Sakura herself, but...
Some part of Sakura's core personality rebelled at the idea of leaving the gate open.
It clanged shut after a laborious effort, and by then the light was beginning to fade and she struggled to make out his figure as it disappeared down the path.
The land itself, as far as she could tell in the steadily encroaching dusk, had probably been a real farm at some point, but now it was a mess of weeds, rocks, packed earth and six-year trees. The space was cluttered with the debris of neglect, but it was also a lot of space to use for... something. Definitely something. Sakura had nebulous ideas about growing vegetables, but no idea what or how to do it.
All that could come later. It seemed like, whatever she did or didn't know abut actually growing anything, she'd have to make sure there was space for it first. She'd need... what, an axe? There was a distant concept in her mind that trees could be removed with an axe. That was definitely a thing somewhere.
There were probably books on this topic. Or, like, YouTube tutorials?
Sakura hauled her bags up to the wooden buildings that she could still make out from between the young trees. One of them was a poorly maintained outbuilding of some kind with its roof collapsed on one side, which smelled like a series of increasingly untidy animals had made their homes there over the years.
The other outbuilding housed a toilet, a sink and a showerhead, and it seemed dirty but not damaged. She'd have to find where to turn the water back on, but she could do that once she'd put her bags down.
She walked around the farmhouse, finally, and discovered to her relief that it seemed like it was in good shape - no obvious damage, no weird holes or nests or smells. Inside, the single-room house had been left untouched for years and the dust was thick in the air. There was a bed in one corner, covered by an off-white dust sheet, and a table in the middle of the room. Otherwise there were two windows, a big old chest with a copper catch, metal hooks in the wall for hanging something, and a big fireplace in one corner. And that was it.
Sakura licked her lips. It wasn't much by any stretch, but it was all hers, and unless she did something impressively stupid - more stupid than what she'd already done, presumably - nobody would be able to take it from her.
If nothing else, it was a roof over her head, which was the most pressing of her immediate concerns. She dropped her bags and went to find where she could switch the water back on and reestablish the connection to the main pipes. Out this far, that was probably all that was necessary.
The water in the shower, toilet and sink was running by the time it was dark, even if it was hard to tell what colour it was running. She squinted at it in the light from her phone and cautiously licked some off her fingers. It smelled fine, and tasted slightly metallic - but probably just from the pipes, she guessed.
The house had no electricity and Sakura hadn't thought to include a proper torch in her belongings, so once she went back into the farm house she again used her phone to dig through her bags. She was glad that she'd at least had the foresight to slip a packet of senbei and a can of tea into her things.
She ate in the dark, getting crumbs everywhere, flicking through information online about getting her electricity connected again, which seemed to be a slightly more complicated process than turning the water back on.
When she was finished eating, she tugged the dust sheet off the bed and found a mostly-clean cotton-stuffed mattress on the bed beneath it. She flipped it over because she'd read somewhere that was what you were supposed to do, and then she pulled a coat from her bag over her for warmth, turned her phone off and settled in for the night.
It was darker here, she thought. No lights outside. And the valley seemed cold. And Sakura had... nothing. Not even a real job anymore.
She was probably too old, and too complicit in her own problems, to spend her first night in a new house crying her eyes out. She knew it, and she felt slightly ashamed about it, but... there wasn't an age limit on being lost and alone and upset about it.
At least she was sober, she thought, and then made an ugly laughing sound while she stared into the dark.